Sir Paul McCartney recalls shock of John Lennon’s murder

On The Jonathan Ross Show last night, the former Beatle said of the killing in December 1980: “It was early in the morning, I was in the country and I just got a phone call and it was like [he moves his body back in shock].

“I think it was like that for everyone.

“It was just so horrific, you couldn’t take it in.

“I couldn’t take it in and for days couldn’t think that he was gone.

“It was just a huge shock then I had to tell Linda [Sir Paul’s late wife] and the kids and it was very difficult…”

“For me it was just so sad that I wasn’t going to see him [Lennon] again.”

Of the killer Mark Chapman he said: “The phrase kept coming in my head, ‘The jerk of all jerks’.

“It was just like: ‘This is just a jerk, this is not even a guy politically motivated, it’s just some total random thing’.”

There was some solace in the fact that we got back together

Sir Paul McCartney

Speaking of the break-up of The Beatles, Sir Paul, 72, said: “We got to a point where we got really crappy over business.

“That rubbed off on me and for years I thought: ‘Oh me and John, bitter rivals’, and all this stuff.”

He said he was “very lucky” he and John, who was just 40 when he was killed, had managed to get over their differences.

Fighting each other eventually became “boring” and they started to talk again, he said.

They bonded over “normal stuff” such as being new fathers and recipes for making bread.

“I’m so glad because it would have been the worst thing in the world to have this great relationship that then soured and he gets killed, so there was some solace in the fact that we got back together,” he said.

“We were good friends.

“The story about the break-up; it’s true but it’s not the main bit, the main bit was the affection.”